Disaster Alerts Ringing at All Hours to Decrease... Transmission Standards Reorganized

Ministry of the Interior and Safety Consults with Related Ministries to Improve Broadcast Standards
"Excessive Disaster Alerts Actually Reduce Vigilance"

Meaningless disaster alerts caused by incidents in other regions or duplicate warnings are expected to disappear. On the 7th, the Ministry of the Interior and Safety announced, “We will reduce unnecessary disaster message transmissions to alleviate public fatigue and inconvenience.”

The disaster message service, which began in 2005, is divided into urgent messages (national crises such as wartime situations, air raid alerts, earthquakes of magnitude 6.0 or higher), emergency messages (natural and social disasters such as typhoons and fires), and safety guidance messages (cases requiring safety precautions such as safe driving in winter) depending on the severity of the disaster.

Disaster messages were sent an average of 414 times per year until 2019, but from 2020, due to the sending of COVID-19 guidance messages, the average annual number surged 131 times to 54,402 over three years until 2022. In particular, inconveniences have been raised due to midnight alarms caused by earthquakes in distant regions, simple icy road guidance in winter, and frequent missing person search messages.

At around 9:38 PM on April 28, an emergency disaster message was sent reporting an earthquake in Myeong-dong, Jongno-gu, Seoul. However, it was confirmed that this was a false alarm due to a training message being sent by mistake, and no actual earthquake occurred. [Image source=Yonhap News]

Accordingly, the Ministry of the Interior and Safety has prepared improvement measures for disaster message transmission standards in consultation with related ministries such as the Korea Meteorological Administration and the National Police Agency.

For earthquakes, the target transmission area has been changed from the current metropolitan city/province level to the city/county/district level to prevent messages from being sent to residents in distant areas. In addition, roles between agencies have been clarified to prevent duplicate transmissions. Although the authority to send earthquake disaster messages lies with the Korea Meteorological Administration and local governments only have the authority to send evacuation and action guidelines, there was a case on the 28th of last month during an earthquake disaster message drill where the Jongno District Office in Seoul sent an earthquake occurrence message.

In the case of extreme heavy rain with 50mm or more in 1 hour or 90mm or more in 3 hours, the Korea Meteorological Administration will directly send disaster messages to residents in dangerous areas at the eup/myeon/dong level. When heavy snow falls, messages will only be sent during road closures, and simple guidance will be refrained from.

The revised disaster message standards and operation regulations will be pilot-applied in the metropolitan area starting next month on the 15th and are planned to be expanded nationwide from May next year.

[Image source: Provided by the Ministry of the Interior and Safety]

Missing person alerts are classified as a long-term improvement task, and a missing person message reception-only ‘Amber Channel’ will be established by 2025. In the United States, when a child goes missing or is abducted, information about the child and suspects is transmitted through multiple communication channels. The government also plans to build an Amber Channel in the future so that users can receive it if they wish.

Kim Seong-ho, head of the Disaster Safety Management Headquarters at the Ministry of the Interior and Safety, said, “In response to criticisms that excessive disaster messages actually reduce vigilance, we are improving the transmission standards according to necessity and situation,” adding, “We will do our best to make smartphone disaster messages a ‘guardian of the people’ by establishing transmission standards that fit the necessity and situation.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.